Date: Fri 21-Jun-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

house-and-garden-tour

Full Text:

Historic House and Garden Tour w/photos

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

The Newtown Historical Society will sponsor its second annual Historic House

and Garden Tour on Saturday, June 29, from noon to 5 pm.

Five sites are on the tour: the house and gardens of Patricia Philipp on Queen

Street, the gardens of Dr and Mrs Peter Jameson on Tory Lane, the home and

container garden of Jane and Robert Cottingham on Blackman Road, the gardens

of Jerry and Ann Marie DeLuccio on Taunton Hill Road and the gardens of Dr

Humberto and Gretchen Bauta on Taunton Ridge Road.

Tickets, $20 each, are limited. Everyone, infants included, must have a ticket

because of insurance regulations. For tickets, send a check to PO Box 189,

Newtown 06470. Tickets may be picked up on the day of the tour between 11:30

am and 12:30 pm at the Matthew Curtiss House, 44 Main Street. The Curtiss

House won't be open but the gardens will. The gardens are being re-established

by the Garden Club of Newtown.

Gardens at Beckonsfield

After living on Main Street for 17 years, Jerry and Ann Marie DeLuccio decided

it was time for a change. Three years ago they saw the 1938 house and six

acres on Taunton Hill Road which was to become their new home.

"We called it Beckonsfield because from the moment we saw it, it beckoned to

our hearts," Ann Marie DeLuccio said.

One of the couple's first steps was to ask landscape designer Kim Proctor of

Newtown to develop a 10-year garden plan, now in its third year. "The garden

was designed to be complimentary to the natural beauty of the land, to be

comfortable," Mrs DeLuccio said. "We feel privileged to own and share this

garden."

The herb garden came first. A terrace was laid last year and the perennial

beds were extended. A stream garden was completed this year. "We plan to

landscape the pond with grasses," Mrs DeLuccio said. "The foxgloves just

popped open this morning and the roses have finally opened. We didn't have any

roses last year but this year they are wonderful."

Dutchess of Windsor clematis climbs over an arbor near the terrace, Pink Fairy

roses and white astilbe surround a bench in the front yard, shaded by a bridal

tree planted about 50 years ago. "The Majesties," two huge trees - their low

branches wonderful for climbing - shade the backyard. Apple tree espaliers

climb the barn wall; pink and white peonies fill a horseshoe-shaped bed. A

path has been mowed to provide a walkway for strolling into a meadow filled

with wildflowers.

Gardens at Dorfield

Dr Peter and Theodora Jameson patterned the gardens at Dorfield, their home on

Tory Lane, after an English country garden like those of his childhood home in

Yorkshire. The show begins early with 12,000 spring bulbs and continues

through the summer and into the fall with a mix of colors provided by

carefully planned gardens of flowers, evergreens and specimen trees.

When the Jamesons purchased the property in 1984, there was a large

rhododendron, four azaleas and acres of overgrown gardens. Today visitors can

spend hours walking the grounds, examining many of the rare plants and

meandering through paths cut to spots like the secret garden grounds with its

small footbridge, a weeping Norway spruce, spiraea, broom and an umbrella pine

like the one behind Trinity Church where Teddy Jameson serves as a church

warden.

Four years ago the Jamesons used two crowbars to move stone walls and create a

raised bed garden at the rear of their property. Gardens surround the house

which was built in 1938 by the farmer who sold his land to the state, for the

creation of Fairfield Hills Hospital, and moved to Tory Lane.

Now there's a cutting garden to fill the house with fresh flowers, a rose

garden, and beds of day lilies which were extended last year when they grew

too crowded and needed to be thinned. The silver lace vine, "Mile-a-Minute"

polygonium (planted just 10 years ago) and clematis cover an arbor and the

garage, providing nesting places for birds.

Note trees like the Full Moon maple, which glows in the dark, the weeping

copper beach, gold cypress, the contorted Betula pendula (weeping birch)

"Youngii" and the rare acer pseudopalmata. Check out the family of birds who

are nesting in a wreath on the front door.

"It's a lot of fun," Dr Jameson said of his gardens, adding wryly, "It's a lot

of work."

Blackman Homestead

Built in 1758 and enlarged about 1810, the Blackman Homestead was willed to

the Newtown Historical Society by the Blackmans in the 1970s. The property was

to be converted into a "farm museum" until the society opted to purchase the

Matthew Curtiss House on Main Street instead. So the property on Blackman Road

was sold, then sold again 18 years ago to the current owners, artist Robert

Cottingham and his wife, Jane, an antiques collector and dealer.

Eleven of the 12 outbuildings still are standing (only the silo is missing).

Bob Cottingham uses three of the barns for his studios; the outhouse was moved

to become a garden shed near the patio where Jane has established a container

garden. The Cottinghams purchased 10 adjacent acres to add to their original

two; farmer Andy Sedor grows hay on the land.

Soon to be featured in Architectural Digest, the house is filled with Bob

Cottingham's contemporary sign paintings and Jane's collection of Edwardian

advertising and shop fittings from English stores and pubs.

The five-bedroom house has two staircases and two of its original three

fireplaces. The original kitchen with its beehive oven is now the dining room.

The Cottinghams found old windows stored in a barn and used the glass to make

12-over-12 windows to replace the Victorian windows that had been installed by

a previous owner.

"Everything in the house looks the same because we feel an obligation to keep

the house just as it was," Jane Cottingham said. "I always feel like this is

the Blackmans' house."

October Hills

A long, curving crushed stone driveway brings visitors through stands of

specimen trees to October Hills, the home of Dr Humberto and Gretchen Bauta.

The contemporary brick home designed by Gretchen's brother, an architect, 22

years ago rises majestically from the midst of 15 acres of plantings.

The land was once pasture; the Bautas have spent years planting trees and

flowers, seeding and mowing lawns, tending vegetable and perennial gardens.

Each of the children planted a tree - copper beech or locust - when they left

for college. Now that the children are nearly all grown, the Bautas envision a

more "environmental garden" with banks of wildflowers to replace broad

expanses of lawn.

A well-mulched shade garden encloses the swimming pool and draws visitors

along a path past a gazebo to a vegetable garden which slowly is being

converted into a cutting garden, past an arbor covered with masses of pale

pink "New Dawn" roses, and on to daughter Pilar's barn where Lolita, a

300-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, lives. There are also two cows, two

horses, three dogs and two cats at October Hills.

There's a romantic story behind the gazebo. The Bautas were married in at the

home of her parents in Toronto; it was later shipped to their home in Newtown.

She's Canadian, raised in England, he is Cuban, and their gardens reflect a

melding of their backgrounds.

Queen Street

The intoxicating fragrance of a vintage white lilac tree fills the backyard of

the former farmhouse which Patricia Philipp bought about two years ago. One of

the oldest houses on Queen Street, its foundation and core are believed to

date back to 1757. It was significantly changed in the mid-1800s, however, to

acquire the Greek Revival look that it wears today.

Owned by the Beers family for many years during the 1800s, the house has two

fireplaces and staircases: one a narrow, winding stair typical of colonial

houses, the other a broad Victorian style.

About 30 years ago the bathrooms were tiled and modernized, floors were

covered in yards of avocado green carpeting and other "improvements" were

made. The new owner has removed the carpets and refinished the old wide-board

pine floors. When the plumbing broke in one bathroom recently, she removed the

modern sink and replaced it with a Victorian-style pedestal sink.

A longtime admirer of the house, Patricia Philipp knew from the moment she

first stepped inside that she had to own it, or, rather, that it would own

her. Still, she finds the time to spend many hours outside where perennial

flower beds, a small red barn and a kiwi vine-laden arbor accent the backyard.

"The flower beds were overgrown but I've been very cautiously weeding because

I'm afraid I might pull up something that should stay," she said. "There are

lots of interesting plants like the kiwi, which you would think is tropical.

There's a male and a female plant growing over the arbor, with walnut-size

fruit this year. It just goes to show what a gardener Mr McDonald (the former

owner) was."

"I'm planting old-fashioned varieties that were at my grandmother's house when

I was growing up," she said. Soon it will all be Nana's garden."